Customer requirements
- Provide IT to the HQ, local offices and a mobile work force
- Bring a dispersed work-force closer together by providing communications with low-cost video conferencing
- Provide a single, central point for shared records and databases, email and shared network resources
- Provide intuitive systems to enable more work and less training
- Secure the CFT data without relying on user intervention
The MIS solution
- Utilise best-of-breed Apple technologies
- Mobilise services of strategic partners to build a secure infrastructure
- Leverage the Unix functionality of OS X to provide secure, off-site back up
- Provide training and support to ensure CFT objectives are met
Technical benefits
- Mobile computing but with data security through remote access to file server
- Easy access via the web to CFT policy documents and central files
- Ready communication between the team of professionals and to sustain face-to-face communications from remote locations
- Flexibility and ease of use of wireless networking
- Secure integration of CFT mobile systems at all of the wireless locations
Business benefits
- Reliable technology shared across all the organization
- One point of reference for all computerised files (guarantees these are current when accessed)
- A central database of policies, procedures, guidelines, forms, handbooks and guides accessible to many communities via an intranet
- Security of internal operation and networks, and all backed-up automatically
- A closer feeling of team-membership across the dispersed organization
- Security of working with a single IT supplier who is actively interested and involved with the work of the client and in providing them with working solutions and close support
- Reduced operating costs through leveraging communications technologies to support home working.
- Use of iSight and iChat has reduced travelling time and expenses incurred in CFT Team meetings.
Partners and technologies
- Apple: OS X Server and OS X client software running off Macintosh hardware
- FastNet International (ISP): infrastructure and communication tools
- PowerOn Software: network diary and contact management application
- FileMaker Inc: Provision of database software
Customer information
For more information about our customer please visit:
www.thecft.org.uk
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Founded in 1945, by Paul Field to provide 'families for life' for children in need,
The Children's Family Trust is a Registered Charity (no.208607). Today, the Trust
works as an independent fostering agency not only regulated by the Charity Commission,
but also by the Commission for Social Care Inspectorate both in England and again in Wales.
The CFT are headquartered in Droitwich, Worcs., with a team of social work professionals
across the country supporting local foster carers with a range of services from daily
support through to their professional training and development. The clients of the Trust
are local authorities across England and Wales.
The situation
Significant legislative changes, enacted over recent years and especially
those which came into effect in 2002, prompted a complete rethink of the structure of the
Trust and its business plan. As a result, the Trust instigated a major re-structuring and
embarked upon a serious growth in the scale of its operations. Additionally, in 2003 the
Trust broadened its traditional focus of permanent care for children to include provision
for those needing shorter-term care of various kinds.
The challenge therefore was to design and implement an IT infrastructure
that would support a mobile professional social-work team without needing to turn them
into 'techies' or 'road-warriors', as well as providing the HQ back-office systems.
The systems needed to provide a secure central store for data for the
exclusive, secure access by staff whilst at the same time providing information relating
to the work of the CFT to selected groups such as local authorities as well as the wider
public. An essential consideration was the confidential and highly sensitive nature of
much of the data stored as it relates to 'children in care'.
The MIS solution
Having worked closely with the team, MIS recognised that the proposed
solution would require industry-standard systems that were intuitive and 'easy to live with'
and that would engender the team-working in a dispersed work-force.
The Droitwich headquarters of the CFT is the hub for their IT systems.
Here MIS set up an Apple OS X server to provide file services to local and remote users.
'Now Up-to-Date' and 'Contact' from PowerOn Software (the leading network diary and contact
management application for Macintosh) were set up as the main Event and Contact server,
synchronising with network users' own diary and contact files on connection to the OS X
server.
The local area network for the HQ team was connected to the Internet
via an ADSL link provided by FastNet International using an ADSL router incorporating a
wireless controller. This router also has support for Virtual Private Network (VPN)
connections and provides the necessary firewalling against unwanted intrusion to the
network.
A wireless networked HP 3700dn and a local inkjet printer fulfil the
headquarters' needs and a scanner is used to capture essential papers for shared access
over the network. The network (both wired and wireless) in Droitwich provides support
for the executive and administrative team permanently based there. It also provides
wireless networking support for other members of the team visiting the office.
Depending on their mobility needs, HQ staff are provided with either
iMacs or iBooks and each has an iSight camera. Local offices are wireless-enabled to
facilitate immediate working by visiting team members and to minimise the technical
skills needed by local mobile workers by avoiding the need to reset their laptops for
various locations. This wireless connectivity also provides access to local multi-function
printers/fax/copiers.
All CFT professional staff are issued with industry standard hardware
and software:
- Apple iBooks running OS X
- MS Office
- Now Contact and Now Up-to-Date
- Apple iSight cameras
Communications and Internet service provision via ADSL from FastNet
International provides each regional office location with a VPN connection into the CFT
wide area network. This provides the link to the Droitwich OS X file server and the
mechanism by which video conferencing calls, audio conferencing and Instant Messaging
(IM) are managed. Recognising the working-hours flexibility that working with children in
care can demand, home-ADSL connections are also provided to facilitate out-of-hours support
and 24x7 availability of central files.
MIS set up these systems at each of the office and home locations, with
wireless connections into the ADSL line using the wireless networking support built in
to the Apple iBooks. Shortcuts were set up to facilitate easy connection to the OS X
server at headquarters and all diaries and contact databases set to synchronise with the
Event and Contact server running on the OS X server as soon as a connection to the server
is made.
All work is copied to the server for back-up, which is executed off-site.
This back-up is made over the wide area network to the OS X server at MIS using the Unix
R-Synch function that minimizes the amount of data travelling over the VPN by making
changes at character level and writing these changes to an external firewire hard drive.
Should it be needed, this drive can be taken to site and restored to the failed system
significantly faster than a back-up archive.
The future
When it engaged MIS to design and implement their new IT infrastructure,
the CFT asked them to take responsibility for the management of the technologies in use
across the Trust.
Since this implementation, MIS is now working with the CFT to:
- help evaluate plans for a wider use of their intranet (to disseminate more information
about the CFT and give access to the required forms and paperwork)
- enhance the website as a source of information for internal communities of staff,
self-employed foster carers, children-in-care, and as a route for privileged
controlled access to selected files such as current vacancies for children needing
placement
- support FileMaker Pro based solutions for various needs, including marketing, HR
systems and fund-raising
- develop networks and provide further hardware and software solutions for growing
regional offices and mobile staff, with the consequent development of communications
lines using faster secure technologies as these become available
- provide an in-house mail server to facilitate further security and back-up for email
- provide staff training, coaching and support as users become more sophisticated and
require and demand more sophisticated solutions.
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“We need technologies that facilitate and enable our work. Knowing that MIS is working with us to ensure our IT needs are anticipated, met and maintained allows us to focus on our own mission to provide children with the dedicated care they need. It's one big potential worry crossed off our list”
Andrew Turner
Chairman of the Trustees
The Children's Family Trust
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